Stolen Prey

eater than anyone else, came from all those years as a midnight writer … meaning a hacker.
    “So I say, ‘Jacob who?’ This overnight computer guy, Jon, says, ‘Jacob Kline,’ and I say, ‘Holy shit, there’s your leak, right there. There’s your money.’ That’s when we decided I better get you out of bed.”
    I N THE SECURE AREA , the pizza guy, who wore a little white paper hat like the ones that U.S. Marines called cunt hats, said, “Dude,” and a computer guy turned from his terminal and asked, “You Lucas?”
    “So tell me,” Lucas said, taking a chair.
    The pizza guy said, “Jacob was like this total stoner, slacker, bullshit artist, I don’t know how he kept the job.”
    “Good programmer,” ICE said. “Smart.”
    “But messed up,” said the computer guy named Jon. “He was depressed. I mean, like mentally ill, not like bummed out.”
    “Okay,” Lucas said.
    “And he wouldn’t take his meds, even when he was going down. He’d just sit there and get worse,” Jon said. “Said he couldn’t program when he was taking his meds, said it screwed up his head.”
    “His head was totally screwed up,” said the pizza guy.
    “So why does that make you think…?” Lucas let the question hang.
    “He used to talk about making a killing with some computer app and then getting out, so he wouldn’t have to work,” Jon said. “He said work was what was killing him. It was so boring. So stupid. He couldn’t stand it. He said he went out to Silicon Valley one time, thinking it might be better, but it was worse, they treated people like robots. Anyway, he got fired for non-performance. He knew it was coming … and this stuff that ICE has been looking at, it
feels
like his work. It works and all, but it’s got these little flourishes….”
    ICE nodded. “I know him from gamer work. He’s both fucked up and good. I don’t know his style well enough to pick it out, but I believe Jon when he says he can.”
    “Like a writing style,” Lucas said. “Like a book-writing style.”
    “Exactly,” said ICE. “The other thing that we didn’t think about long enough … whoever stole this money knew a lot about banking and how to set up accounts. So it had to be inside, right? But if it was inside, why did they set up this back door to get in? It’d be easier and less visible if they moved the money from in here. You wouldn’t have this
doily
to untangle.”
    “But that would pin it down to somebody here,” Lucas said. “If you were in here, and you built a back door, it’d look like itwas done by an outsider. The back door could function as a decoy.”
    “True, I didn’t think of that,” ICE said. She looked at Jon. “I guess you’re fucked.”
    “Not recently,” he said, and waggled his eyebrows at her.
    “In your dreams,” she said.
    “Okay, kids, calm down,” Lucas said. “You’re saying the main reason that Jacob did it is, he’s messed up.”
    “Not exactly,” Jon said. “Because this almost has to be an inside job, which has everybody worried. But the people working here now are the straightest, most-insured, most 401k’d, middle-class…” He paused, then pointed at ICE. “She’s the biggest criminal who’s ever been in here. Except for Jacob. What I’m saying is, Jacob would do this. Nobody else would.”
    “I agree except for one thing,” the pizza guy said. “He’s the laziest motherfucker in the world. He’s too lazy to steal. He’s too lazy to learn how to drive a car—he used to order pizzas at the end of his shift because he knew the store was down near where he lives, and he’d bum a ride home. That’s what I don’t see: he doesn’t give a shit, not enough to steal a billion dollars or whatever it is.”
    “Also true,” ICE said. “And it’s not because he’s depressed. He’s just fuckin’ lazy.”
    Jon and ICE said that whoever had built the back door had, in fact, created a little group of booby traps and alarms, but they were taking them out and should be done by the middle of the day. “I never did finish over at Sunnie, so after we’re done here, I’m gonna go home and get a few hours of sleep, then get some sliders and go back to Sunnie. When I get done with
that
, I’m going to Paris.”
    “Where do I find this Jacob guy?” Lucas asked.
    “I know the answer to that,” Jon said.
    W HEN L UCAS left the bank, it was still before eight o’clock, and there was no reason to expect that Del would be awake. But there